Biography (1823 - 1903)

Her faces are all ethereally beautiful and I can't think of an artist painting fairies or youngsters who captured that mystical etherealness quite the way she did. Some of the paintings just take you to another time, another place. Not of this world - somewhere in that corridor which exists between life and death. A beautiful place where we are once more, for a short time, young again.

Sophie Gengembre Anderson ~ Biography

Sophie Anderson was born in Paris, the daughter of a Parisian architect and an English mother. She studied portrait painting in her early years under Baron von Steuben in Paris.

At the outbreak of the 1848 Revolution, she moved with her family to America, settling in Cincinnati where she pursued portrait painting.
She married the British artist, Walter Anderson, and returned to England in 1854. She exhibited at the Royal Academy during 1855.

Around 1871 she moved to Capri because of ill-health. Eventually she returned to England and lived in Falmouth. Died in 1903.

Sophie Anderson ~ Trivia

Source:Victorian Painting. Book, 2003. Probaly the most beautifully presented book on art I have ever seen. A treasure, a marvel, a triumph of printed matter. Everyone who loves Victorian painting should have a copy - it is that good.

Her painting, Foundling Girls in their School Dresses at Prayer in the Chapel, c. 1877, oil on canvas, 67.3 x 53.5cm, is at the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children, London. The Foundling Hospital itself was demolished in 1926, and its name changed in 1954. Today it is the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children.

Her painting, Elaine (1870), was purchased by the Walker Art gallery, Liverpool from its autumn exhibition in 1871. It was the first work piad for from the rates.